The Eighth Coming
by Alix Cohen
Summary: Episode three. The TARDIS lands on a planet where the first seven Doctors are worshipped - and only the first seven.
1. Chapter 1

Ariselvin Danič was wandering in the woods. There was nothing unusual about this; his Year were encouraged to spend time alone thinking. Today, though, he was pondering a difficult question, one his friend Ajra Tann had been caned for asking last Watchday.

Ajra had asked why there were only seven Doctors, when according to Scripture, there should be nearly twice as many. It was something no one asked, and something Ariselvin had never thought about; the priests told you how many Doctors there were, and you accepted it. And perhaps Ajra should have known better; he was thirteen like the rest of his Year. But his father was a madman, everyone knew that, so maybe it should not have come as a surprise that he was questioning something that everyone took for granted.

It didn't help that Ajra had evidence, something his Year had been taught to take very seriously. He had pointed out the exact moment it was proclaimed that the Doctor had thirteen lives (Four 14). The fact that the priest had waited until he'd mentioned Morbius to beat him had only driven the fact more deeply into Ariselvin's mind. The priests and Scripture did not agree.

Ariselvin heard a strange noise, one he'd been hearing all his life. But now he was far from the temples; there was no way someone could be watching Scripture out here. His heart leapt. Could it be? Was it, at last, the Doctor? (One 10:6 "One day, I shall come back.) Glancing skyward, he made the sign of two hearts and then hurried into the clearing the sound was coming from.

The TARDIS faded into view before him. He fell to his knees, pressing his fists to his chest again. It was real. The Doctor is coming.

Suddenly it hit him how little time he had to make himself presentable. He adjusted his hat and scarf, checked his coat pockets, and sprang to his feet just as the door opened.

Two humanoids stepped out. The man resembled none of the Seven Doctors, and the woman none of the Companions. But there was no one else they could be. Ariselvin cleared his throat, retrieved a white paper bag from his coat pocket, and greeted the strangers in the traditional manner of the Fourth Year.

"Hello," he said. "Would you like a jelly baby?"

* * *

The Doctor was unfazed. "Yes, I would, thank you," he said, taking the proffered bag and eating one of the candies it held. "Here, have a jellybaby," he said to Lindsay with his mouth full. She took on from the bag and examined it.

"Marvelous things, jellybabies," the Doctor went on. "Y'know, I've never been on a planet besides Earth that had them. Mind you, these aren't quite up to Earth standard—" he took another jellybaby and looked it over before popping it into his mouth and handing the bag back to its young owner—"but quite tasty all the same. Eat up, Lindsay, it's polite here. Speaking of here, what is this planet, exactly?"

Lindsay did as she was told. The jellybaby was chewy, slightly sticky, and orange-flavored. Not bad, actually. The boy who'd brought them was strange, though. He was short with scruffy brown hair, probably of middle-school age, and definitely dressed like the Fourth Doctor, except that his scarf barely reached his waist.

"You are on the planet Verity," the boy announced. "We are half a kilometer from the edge of Western Capital City, after noon on the first Twosday of the third month of the sixty-sixth year of the Cyclic Count."

The Doctor nodded as if he understood. Lindsay was dismayed. Tuesday! They got to another planet, and it was _Tuesday_?

"Verity's been on my list of places to visit for a while now," the Doctor said. "And Western Capital sounds like a lovely place. Can you take us there?"

"Certainly," the boy said, turning and heading off into the trees. "I would be honored to bring the Doctor and his Companion into the city."

"Hang on," the Doctor said, catching up with the boy. "How do you know I'm the Doctor? And who did you say you were?"

"I know you're the Doctor because you came in the TARDIS," the boy said matter-of-factly. "Everyone knows that. And I'm Ariselvin Danič of the Fourth Year. Which Doctor are you? You don't look like any of them."

_Strange_, Lindsay thought. _He goes from sounding grown-up to acting like a little kid. Like he's quoting something half the time._ She wasn't far wrong.

"I'm the Eleventh Doctor," the Doctor said, "and this is Lindsay Adams." Lindsay nodded and smiled politely. Ariselvin grinned back.

They were almost at the edge of the forest when Ariselvin remembered the question he'd been pondering all morning, which had been driven out of his head by the Doctor's sudden arrival. "Macra!" he said under his breath, then glanced around to see if anyone had heard him swear.

The Companion had heard him. (What was her name again?) "Is something wrong?" she asked.

"I can't take you in along the main road," Ariselvin said. "We'll have to go around south." He moved off slowly through the trees; the Doctor and the Companion followed him.

"Why do we have to go around?" the Doctor asked suddenly in his ear. Ariselvin jumped, then turned around.

"You're not one of the canonical Doctors," he replied. "If you were one of the Seven, we could walk right in and you'd be a hero. But you're not, and that makes you a heretic and a false Doctor."

"But I _am_ the Doctor!"

"Yes, I _know_ you're the Doctor. And _you_ know you're the Doctor. But that doesn't mean—we talked about this last Watchday in school. My friend Ajra asked—" He had a thought suddenly, and started walking south again.

"So where are we going now?" the Companion asked.

"To Ajra Tann's house. His father can help us. He's a madman _and_ a heretic." To Lindsay, Ariselvin sounded childish again, and gleeful.

"Why the heretic?" she whispered to the Doctor as they followed Ariselvin.

"It's always heretics, for some reason," the Doctor whispered back.

"Think he's related to Binro?" Lindsay joked.

"No, Ribos is too far from Verity, and the people are different species," the Doctor replied, straight-faced.

Lindsay considered a moment, then asked, "Okay, so why is it always humanoids?"

"Do you _want_ to deal with fish or giant insects all the time? Especially after what you thought of the Judoon."

"I dunno," Lindsay said thoughtfully. "I always thought there were so many humanoid species because of budget constraints."

"I don't _have_ a budget," the Doctor retorted.

"My point exactly." Lindsay grinned.

Ariselvin rolled his eyes. Doctors and Companions, always bickering (Four 24:1-4; Six 1:1-10:4). He hurried on, finally reached the old observatory at the edge of the city, and knocked on the door.

* * *

**A/N:** Binro the Heretic is a minor character in the Fourth Doctor serial "The Ribos Operation." All of Ariselvin's citations are as accurate as I can make them; I may update them as I go.


	2. Chapter 2

The door was opened by a short man with a bushy beard, a vest covered in question marks, and glasses that magnified his eyes. Lindsay had read _The Hobbit_ once, and vaguely remembered the dwarves looking like him. He glanced around suspiciously, and smiled when he saw Ariselvin. "Harry, my dear boy! Come to torture me with questions again?"

"When I think of some, I will," Ariselvin teased back. Then he became serious and grown-up again. "Fenrik, I've brought some friends to see you." He paused and glanced around, exactly as the man had. "This is the Doctor and his Companion." Another pause. "The _Eleventh_ Doctor."

Fenrik's already owlish eyes widened. "Oh. Come in." He stood back and let the Doctor and Lindsay enter.

"Are you sure?" Lindsay heard the man whisper.

"I saw the TARDIS arrive," Ariselvin replied. "It can't be anyone else. He's here. And you were right."

"I have to be sure," Fenrik replied, before hurrying into his parlor. "Ajra!" he called. "Tea for our guests!"

A boy about Ariselvin's age hurried down the spiral stairs at one end of the semicircular room. His clothes were the same as Ariselvin's. "Yes, Father," he said; then he waved at Ariselvin, who had just entered the parlor, and scurried off.

The Doctor and Lindsay sat down at opposite ends of a battered-looking sofa. Fenrik and Ariselvin settled into overstuffed chairs, and Lindsay took the opportunity to look around. The whole room seemed old and thrown together—faded wallpaper, mismatched furniture, dusty knickknacks. The only part of the room that seemed to be taken care of at all well was a niche in the wall by the door. It contained a little blue police box. The room, and Fenrik himself, gave Lindsay the impression of an absent-minded scientist, but "heretic" was harder to believe.

"Now, I know Harry here saw you arrive, but you'll excuse my needing to convince myself as well," Fenrik said. "Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?"

The Doctor hesitated. "Not at all, Fenrik," he said slowly. "But first, let me ask you something. I've heard your name before. Why are you called Fenrik?"

Lindsay had heard the name before too. Fenric. Curse Of. An ancient enemy of the Seventh Doctor. While she was thinking about it, the other names were oddly familiar too. Ariselvin. Harry for short. Harry Sel…Sullivan. He was named after a Companion. And Ajra…Aj…if it was a Companion, it was Adric. Both Adric and Harry Sullivan traveled with the Fourth Doctor. It suddenly made sense. And Fenrik wore Seventh Doctor clothes. But why was he named after a villain?

"My father wanted me to stand out," Fenrik was saying as Lindsay tuned back in. "My mother wanted to pick something more traditional, but there aren't a lot of names for Sevens, so he finally won the argument." Ajra returned with a tea tray, set it on the table, and sat in the chair next to Ariselvin's.

"And now I'll ask you my question," Fenrik said as he poured the tea. He set down the teapot and looked the Doctor in the eye. "Tell me about your seventh death."

* * *

The Doctor's jaw dropped. Here was a question he never thought he'd be asked. And to be honest, he'd hoped he'd never be asked it. His seventh death was the one he regretted most; even head trauma was more respectable than… "Well, I, er…do I have to answer?"

"Yes, you do," Lindsay said automatically. She wanted to hear this story too.

"Please, Doctor," said Fenrik. The boys watched silently. "This is the only question I can ask that no one outside this room knows the answer to. It's my proof that you are who you say you are."

The Doctor hemmed and hawed, and sipped his tea and refused to look anyone in the eye. Finally he spoke. "I landed on Earth in the year 1995, in some big American city. There was a fight of some sort happening in the street I landed in. When I stepped out of the TARDIS, I was shot by a stray bullet." He stopped.

"And your regeneration?" Fenrik asked. "How did it go?"

The Doctor looked pleadingly at Lindsay, who smiled sympathetically. "I can see it hurts to talk about it," she said. "But you'll feel better afterward. I know."

The Doctor continued his story, speaking mostly to his teacup. "I was taken to a hospital. The surgeon who operated on me didn't realize I had two hearts. At least that's what she told me later. She tried using electric shocks to make my heartbeat sound more like a human's, and ended up stopping both hearts entirely. I died on the operating table, and they put me in a freezer." He drank his tea. Lindsay sipped hers, and glanced at Ariselvin and his friends, who were all mesmerized.

"The anesthetics and the low temperature of the freezer complicated my regeneration. When I awoke, I had no idea where I was, or even who I was."

Fenrik seemed to have heard enough. He stood up, then dropped to his knees, head bowed, fists pressed to his chest. The boys copied him. "It _is_ you," he whispered. The Doctor didn't seem to notice until Lindsay nudged him. "Forgive me for doubting."

The Doctor set his teacup down. "Get up," he said. "I didn't come here to be worshipped. How did you know about all that, anyway?"

"The broadcasts," Ajra said, looking up.

"Broadcasts…" The Doctor thought a moment, then snapped his fingers. "Right. You lot must've picked up the television broadcasts of _Doctor Who_ from Earth! And if I'm not mistaken—" he glanced around the room, taking in its shape, its age, the spiral staircase—"this is the observatory where they were picked up. Am I right?"

"You are, Doctor," Fenrik exclaimed. "Let me show you the archive." He jumped to his feet and hurried up the stairs. The Doctor and Lindsay followed, leaving Ajra and Ariselvin to deal with the tea things.

* * *

"I like stairs," the Doctor said as they started climbing. "Stairs are fun, and there's always something exciting at the top." Yet even he had to stop and catch his breath after three flights of the observatory's steep spiral staircase. Lindsay clung to the railing, doubled over and panting. When she finally lifted her head, she was astounded by what she saw.

The top floor of the observatory was a little smaller than the lower floors, and dominated by a huge telescope. Next to it was a computer that would not have looked out of place on Earth at the start of the 21st century. Scattered around the room were a variety of even older astronomical devices, sextants, astrolabes, a chart of the stars as they appeared from Verity. But what amazed Lindsay was the collection itself.

A single shelf ran half the circumference of the room. It was packed with what looked at first like little books. Lindsay examined them; the spine of each was labeled with the title of a _Doctor Who_ serial. She wandered along the shelf until she found "Tomb of the Cybermen," took it down and opened it. The book was hollow; inside were four square plastic things that reminded Lindsay of floppy discs. Their labels read "Tomb of the Cybermen" and a number, one through four.

She put "Tomb of the Cybermen" back, and took the next book to the left: "Evil of the Daleks." She opened it cautiously, not quite daring to look inside. But she did, and there were seven discs. (On Earth there would only be one.) "Doctor," she said, awed, "they have missing episodes!"

The Doctor was less than impressed. "So," he said, "you have a collection of data discs containing what appear to be episodes of a television programme from another planet. Tell me how this factors into your being a heretic. No, don't tell me," he said, raising a hand as Fenrik started to explain. "Your civilization is based around this television programme; that accounts for your clothes, and the fact that everyone we've met so far is named for characters from this particular programme, which went off the air after twenty-six years of broadcasting. Now, this programme happens to be the one of which I am the protagonist, or have been in a former life. Several former lives, actually, but that's not the point. The point is, societies based on other societies' entertainment broadcasts are quite common. I fail to see what's so special about your archive, or why having a complete collection makes you a heretic."

"Well," Fenrik began, "this archive contains all the original recordings of the broadcasts, which my great-grandfather discovered a hundred years ago. All of this—" he made a sweeping gesture in the direction of the shelf—" is accepted by the priests of the First Year as sacred and ultimate truth." He seemed almost bitter as he said this. "Your Companion seems to know something about the broadcasts. Let me prove to her satisfaction that they are what I say they are." He crossed the room and held out his hand to Lindsay. She gave him the "Evil of the Daleks" book, and he slipped one disc into a slot on the side of the computer. Within a minute, the Second Doctor theme was playing, and Patrick Troughton's face appeared on the screen. Fenrik let it run for long enough to show that it was the right episode, then stopped it, put the disc back in its box, and handed it to Ajra, who had just reached the top of the stairs, followed by Ariselvin. Ajra put "Evil of the Daleks" away, and Fenrik picked up the single book that lay on top of the shelf.

"This," he said, "is _not_ accepted by the priests. _This_, my father found thirty years ago and brought it to the priests. They excommunicated him, and ordered it destroyed. But we kept a copy." He opened the book, took out a disc, and slid it into the computer.

The screen showed a red planet, spinning lazily in space, and labeled SKARO in gold for the benefit of anyone who, like Lindsay, didn't recognize it as such. "It was on the planet Skaro that my old enemy the Master was finally put on trial," said an unfamiliar voice. "They say he listened calmly as his list of evil was read and sentence passed." The planet rolled away, revealing two moons. "Then he made his last, and I thought somewhat curious, request." The moons had become yellow eyes that stared malevolently out of the screen. Lindsay looked away.

Fenrik paused the video. "This," he said, "is what the priests don't want to hear. This is proof that the Doctor has more than seven lives."


End file.
